Page 61 of Dick

It was almost dark, and we were driving through the hood. The neighborhood was a rundown area of Austin called Rundberg. Dick’s Mercedes looked out of place amidst the shitty cars and shittier houses, and the farther we got into the neighborhood, the less I thought what we were doing was cool.

About the time I began to wonder about making it out alive, he pulled into a driveway and right beside one of the shitty little houses. It looked like at some point in time someone had started painting it, and then stopped. The front was yellow, and the back – and half the side – was gray. An old car was in the yard, but it had no wheels. Just the car, sitting down in the dirt.

There was a truck in the driveway in front of us, and I didn’t need to ask if it ran, I could tell by looking at all of the shit leaned against it that it hadn’t gone anywhere in a long, long time.

He put the car in park, shut off the engine, and looked at me. “Ready?”

I wasn’t. I was scared. I nodded my head anyway. “Yep. Don’t get high, and no staring.”

“And don’t go to the bathroom. I mean, not unless you have to.”

I wrinkled my nose at the thought of what the shitty bathroom in the shitty two-tone house would look like and shook my head. “I should be fine as long as we’re not staying.”

“We’re only staying as long as we have to.”

I got out and paid close attention to where I walked to make sure I didn’t step in anything I didn’t want to. Dick checked over each shoulder and locked the car. I followed him to the door, and he knocked on it three times. And then two more.

The secret knock.

After a long wait, a man with a dingy shirt, a beer belly, and four day’s growth of beard answered the door. My mouth flopped open. Immediately, I knew I did not want to be kidnapped or slapped around by him.

Not at all.

I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like he was wearing boxer shorts. I tried to swallow, but apparently forgot how. I took a quick glance at his neck. A jagged scar followed right under his jaw from one side to another.

“Sorry, was in the crapper.” He tossed his head toward me. “She cool?”

“She sure as fuck wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t, would she?”

The man eyed me for a minute, stepped to the side of the door, and nodded. “Come on in.”

The inside of the home was remarkably neat and clean. I tried to make sense of why the yard, cars, and bathroom would be so disgusting – and the home so neat – but couldn’t. I decided to listen to whatever he and Dick talked about and put the pieces of the puzzle together on my own.

I looked around the small living room. There was no couch. We all sat in separate chairs while the T.V. silently played a news station with a stock ticker at the top and bottom of the screen. The sweet smell of cinnamon lingered in the air.

Beer Belly shot me a glare, then quickly shifted his eyes to Dick. “So, your text was cryptic, as always. What’s going on?”

“You turned me onto that deal with Fat Willie a couple of weeks ago. He just paid me.”

Beer Belly reached for his neck. “Fat Willie who stays over in West Lake Oaks?”

I knew West Lake Oaks; it was a really ritzy neighborhood. I stared off to the side and acted disinterested, finding it odd that Dick didn’t introduce me.

“There’s only one Fat fucking Willie,” Dick snapped

“I was just askin’.”

“So, when you do a deal with Fat Willie, what stands out about him when he pays?”

“Pays in old bills and small bills, why?”

Out of my peripheral, I saw Beer Belly reach for his neck. Naturally, I wanted to see if he was scratching his scar, and I took a quick glance.

His eyes shot to me.

I looked away.

“Always. Not sometimes, always, right?” Dick asked.